It’s also fun and easy to use. ‘Tart up’ an image from your photo collection or take one on the camera phone and edit it.

The creators of ColorSplash say:

ColorSplash lets you quickly and easily give photos a dramatic look by converting them to black and white, while keeping your chosen details in color.

In a nutshell

Take a photo and load it into ColorSplash. The image is automatically converted to B&W. Using the native abilities of the iPhone you can zoom in and out with the pinch and flick technique and then wipe your finger over a part of the image to restore the colour.

Step by step to photoart (the basics)

1. Open ColorSplash

2. Tap Start new session

3.  Choose your image

Here is a photo I took with my iPhone. On opening it in ColorSplash all the colour is wiped out.

4. Select the the Pan & Zoom tool (bottom left)

5. Flick to zoom in and find the place where you want to reinstate colour.

6. Select the Color tool and the wipe your finger over the section…just like magic, huh?

Keep switching between the Pan & Zoom and the Color tools until you are satisfied. Made a mistake while editing? Zoom into the section, select the Gray tool and wipe the color back out.

What next?

7. Save (and upload to Flickr so we can see your works of art. Also put a link in the comments below!)

Final image – fire hydrant in red

The ColorSplash tools revealed

This photography app has a ton of in-built tips. I will quickly list the tools here but you will find more in-depth assistance from the Help icon.

Top bar tools from left to right you have:

Menu – Help – Two View Modes – Brush selection – Undo (always handy)

Bottom bar tools from left to right:

Pan &Zoom – Color (select and wipe across image)  – Gray (select and wipe to remove colour)

Get the app

Go to the iTunes Apps Store to buy ColorSplash. It is well worth the money (AUD$2.49)

Related links

• Zack and Vince’s iPhone Reviews
• Flickr search for ColorSplash/iPhone tags

This is an article by Anthea Brown of Lilahpops::Plunging into Photography

ColorSplash – iPhone photography app in 7 easy steps

Most Commented Posts

• Project: My Best Photos From 2008
• How to resize an image in iPhoto
• Cross processing with the GIMP

A comment from elsamuko on a previous post led me to this Lomo Script. I was chuffed to note that elsamuko updated the colours in the script based on my post.

Try it yourself

Simply follow the instructions on the GIMP Plugin Registry page and then watch your image transform before your very eyes. Have some fun with the effects you get.

You can use red, blue, green or neutral color effects and even add a vignette. If you wish, tweak the effects further by selecting the layers and adjusting them manually.

I usually try out a couple of variations before staying with one. It’s easy enough to “CTRL+Z” to undo the effect and then change the script settings to try again.

In the examples below only the color has been selected, nothing else. Look how dramatically you can change your pictures!

Green

Before Lomo

After Lomo

Blue – my fave

Before Lomo

After Lomo

Red

Before Lomo

After Lomo

If you have used the Lomo Script yourself – or decide to -  make sure to leave a link to your photo in the comments so we can check it out.

This is an article by Anthea Brown of Lilahpops::Plunging into Photography

Using the Lomo Script with the GIMP

Also of interest

• Cross processing with the GIMP
• Give your photos a retro feel with the GIMP
• Saturate the colors in a photo with GIMP

This is an article by Anthea Brown of Lilahpops::Plunging into Photography

High speed photography by Chase Jarvis

Also of interest

• Changing a lightbulb on top of the world
• Medieval helpdesk video
• Street magic spoof video

Again, Cordelia has agreed to model for this installment in the iPhoto series of Tips and Tutorials. In this article we’ll make a cartoon effect using iPhoto.

I have a lot of photos of my cats and like many hobby photographers they can be very hit and miss. Sometimes, though, the expression caught in an otherwise ordinary photo makes deserves some post-processing.

The photo

Here we have a photo of my British Shorthair, Cordelia.

You can see that it’s quite grainy and blurry at the same time, very low light conditions and not exactly result I was hoping for. But the look on her face made me want to try to improve the photo somehow. So I decided to do a little more experimenting with iPhoto. In no time at all I had a cartoon/comic type of effect.

It’s all about smoothing the grain

The Reduce Noise option is the key to a cartoon effect. It smooths out all the grain in the image and almost gives it a paintbrush texture.

To start with I opened the Adjust settings and moved the Reduce Noise slider all the way to the right. Play around with this as you mightn’t need to always set this to maximum. In fact, I decreased it a little (to 89.0) as the effect made the image so smooth it became even more blurry. However, even with the decrease the eyes are still out of focus and as any eager amateur photographer knows – the eye have it.

So instead of decreasing the smooth paint-like effect even further I increased the Sharpness (to .71). Instantly the eyes stood out and the cartoon effect was still in tact. There was also more of an outline around the cat.

A few more minor adjustments

To polish up the final image I made a few more adjustments.

Levels and Contrast and Crop for an overall improvement. Saturation to bump up the color. The change I was most impressed with, possibly because I don’t use it very often, was the effect an adjustment to the Highlights setting produced.

Here is the Adjustments window showing the final settings.

And the final result. Voila!

If you have other iPhoto tips you’d like to share let us know in the comments. If you’d like to write a guest post about using iPhoto then get in touch with me via the Contact Form.

This is an article by Anthea Brown of Lilahpops::Plunging into Photography

Make a cartoon effect using iPhoto

Also of interest

• Make your images outstanding using iPhoto effects
• Share the love
• Duplicate an image in iPhoto

Cross processing is something I have started to experiment with. I find I’m drawn to many of these photos on Flickr - the effect can be quite stunning. I uploaded the final cross-processed result of this image to Flickr and it made Explore soon after.

Here we’ll focus on the green effect you can produce, although you can also adjust your settings for other hues, such as red.

It’s all about the curves

Cross processing can be a very simple GIMP edit if you set and save the RGB colour curves to your GIMP library. You can then re-use the setting again and again with other images. I have a few of these options saved in my GIMP library: one is a general curves adjustment; one boosts each RGB colour channel for retro effects; and now I have a green cross process setting.

Save the setting the first time you use it and it will then be available for future edits.

Auto-levels

In the image above I did a quick auto-levels adjustment Colors -> Levels -> Auto. I played around with the Hue-Saturation and Contrast options but decided to not to use these changes as there is quite a lot of contrast already. It will depend on your image if you need to boost the colour and contrast.

Save your curves setting

Now to the curves. Go to Layer -> Duplicate Layer – a handy option as you can simply delete the layer if you don’t like the results. The settings below are what I have come up with after reading a bagful of articles about cross processing.

Select Color -> Curves and change the individual RGB channels to the settings below:

Red setting

Green setting

Blue setting

Select Save and name your curves something useful, like Cross Processing – Green. You can use this setting for other images you cross process without having to change the RGB values each time. To access your saved files next time simply go to Color -> Curves -> Open.

Click OK and the image now looks like this:

You can also add an almost transparent fill layer of a lime green (to bring out more green) or a fushia (to bring out more red and blue). I’ve decided against a fill layer with this particular image.

Crop and you’re done

I cropped the balcony out of the image which brought more focus to the sky and those gorgeous sunbeams.

Et voila! Click the image to view a larger size in Flickr.

Related cross processing articles

• Brian Auer has a great tutorial on both green and red cross processing over at Epic Edits Weblog
• Check out the impressive results by Danny Ngan at Poo-Poo Platter

Other examples

It’s interesting to see the various RGB settings that are used and leads me to think I should make save a few more curves settings saved to my library.

Here are some other images I have cross processed – with varying degrees of success.

Do you have any handy cross processing tips?

This is an article by Anthea Brown of Lilahpops::Plunging into Photography

Cross processing with the GIMP

Also of interest

• Using the Lomo Script with the GIMP
• Give your photos a retro feel with the GIMP
• Saturate the colors in a photo with GIMP

This is the next installment in the iPhoto series.

One of my cats, Cordelia, agreed to help out with this post. Gorgeous as the subject is, the image is a bit dull; there’s not much color and the background could have been better. And, I unfortunately cut off the tip of her right ear. But she is worthy of rescuing with iPhoto!

Before I begin I’ll make a copy of the image.

Open the special effects windows

In this iPhoto edit we’ll combine a few special effects features. So, select Edit and open both the Effects and Adjust options.

Move the special effects windows to either side of the image so you can see the changes as you edit. The editing sliders in the Adjust window are all at the default settings and you should already see the special features from the thumbnails in the Effects window.

Adjust the levels to brighten the image

Adjusting the levels is always my first step when editing. Sometimes a slight levels adjustment is all a photo needs. The left-hand slider controls the darker tones and the right-hand slider controls the lighter tones while the middle slider helps to balance the brightness and shadow. Play around with the settings to see which best suits your image. I moved each slider for this image. I also slightly increased the Exposure (to 0.24) and bumped up the Contrast (to 20)

See the difference these changes have already made. The background is more washed out and Cordelia is more prominent.

But, we can do more.

A tiny retouch

In the original photo do you see the tiny blemish under Cordelia’s right eye? It looks like I took the photo before she had finished grooming. Using the Retouch tool, I moved the slider to roughly the size of the blemish and simply clicked over the spot to remove it. Much tidier.

OK, let’s adjust those settings.

Add some warmth and saturate the colors

The Temperature slider can cool down or warm up your picture. In this instance, we want a bit of warmth so I moved the slider to the right (set to 6.5). This has changed the colour of her eyes to the correct shade of gold. The picture still needs some more color so I slid the Saturation to the right (up to 61). To remove a bit of the darkness on the fur I moved the Shadow slider up (to 6.1).

Each change is small but significant.

A crop and a matte finish

Cordelia’s is looking slightly more reddish than she should be (well, she is a Chocolate British Shorthair after all, not a Reddish British Shorthair) so even though her eyes are now a more true to life colour, I added a slight Tint (to 9.8) to tone down the reddish fur and bring out more of the chocolate color.

Now to the Effects window, I selected Matte. Then a slight Crop to finish. Why the crop after the matte and not before? I did try it that way but the crop was too tight and the matte finish covered part of the cat in white. So I added the matte and then did a couple of crops to get it just right. Having said that, the matte does help disguise the fact that the tip of her right ear was clipped.

Et voila!

If you have other iPhoto tips you’d like to share let us know in the comments. If you’d like to write a guest post about using iPhoto then get in touch with me via the Contact Form.

This is an article by Anthea Brown of Lilahpops::Plunging into Photography

Make your images outstanding using iPhoto effects

Also of interest

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• Share the love
• Duplicate an image in iPhoto

I took this photo the other day on my way home from work.

This friendly fellow was hanging about with his horse pals under the tree in the background to the right. That was going to be my composition, some horses crowding into the shadows of the tree to escape the glare of the sun. But as soon as the horses saw me at the fence they decided to come over and say ‘Neigh‘.

I had the camera on auto settings, the only change I made was to set the macro. Being a lovely rural area I wanted to give it a more country feel. The result ended up looking quite ‘retro’. So, “Bring out the GIMP!” and let’s get started.

A quick word about GIMP

I have written previously about the GIMP here. GIMP is similar to Photoshop but it’s free. You can find out more about it and download your own copy at the GIMP Website and there is a manual available at GIMP Documentation. I found the following post extremely useful in downloading GIMP for Mac:

• How to install GIMP on Mac OSX

Saturate the colours

The first thing I did was a quick auto-levels adjustment at Colors -> Levels -> Auto. Then I bumped up the saturation at Colors -> Hue-Saturation and moved the saturation slider up to 50.

Now for the curves adjustment.

Go crazy with curves

I’m relatively new to curves and have recently been experimenting with the color channels. I followed the advice at Layers magazine on boosting the individual RGB color channels.

See the difference each change makes to the image:

Red color channel

Green color channel

Blue color channel

Tighten the image with a crop

A quick crop, making sure to keep the fly-away hair of the mane intact.

Almost done. The image is now too saturated so back to Colors -> Hue-Saturation and move the saturation slider down to -20. Experiment with the different saturation and curves settings for the best results.

Et voila! Click the image above to view it at a larger size in Flickr.

Save your image

I have been saving the image in the its native GIMP .xcf format and then saving a .jpg copy to load to Flickr. To save it as a .jpg or .png etc go to Image -> Flatten image and then choose File -> Save As …

Related posts

• Saturate the colors in a photo with GIMP
• How to resize an image in iPhoto
• Add special effects to your images with iPhoto
• Use the tools in iPhoto to edit your images

This is an article by Anthea Brown of Lilahpops::Plunging into Photography

Give your photos a retro feel with the GIMP

Also of interest

• Using the Lomo Script with the GIMP
• Cross processing with the GIMP
• Saturate the colors in a photo with GIMP

Quick tip

To make a copy of your photo before you start post processing use the Duplicate option located on the toolbar under Photos or by selecting Cmd+D.

But iPhoto won’t let me click ‘duplicate’

Making a copy of an image can sometimes seem tricky as the Duplicate option isn’t always ‘clickable’. This is because you can’t perform this action when you select an image from a Smart Album.

I recently discovered this after I sorted all my photos into various Smart Albums. Using Smart Albums is an excellent way to organise photos, but because it’s not a real album (they are based on criteria you specify such as keywords) some options are not available to use.

So, if you find you can’t duplicate an image make sure you are not in a Smart Album. Simply browse to the image from a regular album or from the Photo Library option.

This is an article by Anthea Brown of Lilahpops::Plunging into Photography

Duplicate an image in iPhoto

Also of interest

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I visited the Leuralla Toy and Railway Museum the other week and took this photo of an old warning sign.

It’s amusing but it needs some work, right? Being an old-fashioned sign I wanted to add a vintage feel to it. I also wanted to bring out the red in the paint to exaggerate the warning itself. This is where you can yell “Bring out the GIMP!”

Before exporting the image from iPhoto I gave did a quick crop and straighten.

That’s better.

Saturate and contrast

Next, I opened the image in GIMP and selected Colors -> Hue-Saturation and increased the saturation to 100. I also selected Colors -> Brightness-Contrast and increased the contrast to 40.

Now the text of the sign stands out and the red is nice and bright.

Add the vintage effect

Lastly, I added a vignette to give it a more vintage feel. I followed an excellent tutorial at gimpology.com on creating vignettes to do this, so I won’t repeat the steps here. (Note: I didn’t complete the last step of this tutorial which was to add a transparent magenta colour layer over the whole composition.)

And here is the final result. Click the image for a larger size in Flickr.

Makes you think twice about littering.

Try GIMP yourself

GIMP is my new favorite editing tool.

If you’d like to try out GIMP you can download it from the GIMP Website and there is a manual available at GIMP Documentation. I found the following post extremely useful in downloading GIMP for Mac:

• How to install GIMP on Mac OSX

This is an article by Anthea Brown of Lilahpops::Plunging into Photography

Saturate the colors in a photo with GIMP

Also of interest

• Using the Lomo Script with the GIMP
• Cross processing with the GIMP
• Give your photos a retro feel with the GIMP

Resize a photo using the export option

Emailing a photo or posting an image to a website (such as the ones in this post) don’t need to be large files. In fact, a lower resolution is preferable so you don’t crash your friend’s email program or create a webpage that takes a lifetime to load. Resizing an image will reduce its resolution and hence its file size.

There are two options to resize a photo using iPhoto.

Option 1: A simple but effective way to resize and email a photo

Select your image and choose the Email button at the bottom right corner of the iPhoto window. This pop-up box will appear:

The one option you have is to select a file size: Small, Medium, Large and Actual Size. You don’t have the option to select a width or height, but the pop-up will display the file size for each option you select. The smaller the file size the quicker the photo will download to the recipient’s computer.

Select Compose and the Apple Mail program will open for you to write and send your message. This is the most basic option and will only be useful if you use Apple Mail.

Option 2: For more control over resizing your image in iPhoto follow these 3 steps

Step 1 – Choose your image

Select your image and choose File -> Export. A pop-up window with three tabs will appear.

Step 2 – Select a file format

On the File Export tab there are several options you can change – you want the Kind and Size options. The Kind option has five file formats to choose from. Three of these allow you to resize the image: JPEG; PNG; or TIFF. If you select JPEG (a common format to email) you also have the option to select an image quality, ranging from low to maximum, and this will affect the final file size of the image.

Step 3 – Select a size

On the Size option you can simply select Small, Medium or Large, but if you want a specific size select Custom. This is my preferred option.

If you choose Custom select a specific height or width. Click Export and save the image to a location on your computer. And that’s it!

Example of the various file sizes

If you are concerned about the file size of your exported image here’s an example of the different options on one of my photos.

The original dimensions of this image below are 1928 x 1427 pixels with a file size of 1.4 mb. That’s too large a file size to email or add to this post and you would need to scroll across the page to see the entire image. My preferred image size for this website is 400px.

Custom resize

Resizing the original image to a 400px JPEG breaks down to the following dimensions:

• maximum quality = 184kb
• high quality = 44kb
• medium quality = 28kb (this is the one I’m using above)
• low quality = 16kb

Small, medium and large sizes

If I simply want a small, medium or large image (without using the custom option) the original image would become:

• full size = 436kb with the same dimensions
• large = 192kb at 1280 x 947 pixels
• medium = 56kb at 640 x 474 pixels
• small = 20kb at 320 x 237 pixels

Remember…resize on export

I have to admit this resize option in iPhoto hid under the radar for me for a while but it’s actually a very simple process. Having the resize option available when exporting it from iPhoto makes sense. And most importantly, resizing an image on export leaves the original version intact.

This is an article by Anthea Brown of Lilahpops::Plunging into Photography

How to resize an image in iPhoto

Also of interest

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• Make your images outstanding using iPhoto effects
• Duplicate an image in iPhoto